Course Descriptions(as of 15 September 2000)
The following course descriptions have been written by individual instructors
to provide more detailed information on specific section sthan that found
in the General Catalog. When individual descriptions are not available,
the General Catalog descriptions [in brackets] are used. (Although we try
to have as accurate and complete information as possible, this schedule remains
subject to change.)

Interested in Medieval Literature? In
the history of English? In English language study? Look at this graduate
course in Old English open to undergraduates:
ENGL 512A, Introductory Reading in Old English, meeting TTh 9:30-11:20with
Professor Anne Curzan, is a beginning course in the earliest written form
of the English language, extremely helpful for study of English literature
of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance and fundamental to historical study
of the English language. Read the course description, and
if you are interested in registering, please e-mail Professor Curzan directly
and provide the following information: your name; your student number; your
year (junior, senior, etc.); a brief note about why you are interested in
taking this course.

471 A (The Composition Process)TTh 9:30-11:20Guerra
In this course, we will be talking about a number of the theoretical issues
and concerns that have emerged over the past thirty years in the field of
composition studies, focusing in particular on our ever-changing understanding
of the act of writing in terms of product, process, and post-process.
Along the way, we will find ways to test these theories through practical
activities in the classroom so that you can gain insights into what different
students experience when they are asked to write and what different teachers
and researchers think should go on when students are asked to write.
In the long run, the main goal of this course will be to expose you to a
range of theoretical ideas, curricular approaches, and pedagogical strategies
that various teachers, theorists, and researchers believe are likely to lead
to the successful teaching of writing. Your job will be to decide how
to position yourself within this constellation of possibilities. Add codes
available in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL.Text: Joseph
Harris, A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966.

481 A (Special Studies in Expository Writing)TTh 12:30-1:50George
"Style is an essay's soul," write Gary and Glynis Hoffman in Adios, Strunk
and White, the form of writing that breathes life into content.
As we move into the virtually-oriented, computer-literate society of the twenty-first
century, writers are experimenting with a multitude of styles to capture
the uniqueness of their visions in the Millennial Age. This course
will look at the changing notions of "good" style(s) from past to present
and consider their relations to shifting ideologies. Much of the class
will be spent on analyzing a variety of prose (from the style guides themselves,
to literary "masterpieces" to home pages, to your own writing) to get at
the relation between how particular writers craft sentences, phrases, punctuation,
graphics, etc., and what kinds of soul get reflected in these compositions.
Course requirements include a genuine interest in analyzing verbal
style (we will be spending more class time scrutinizing sentence design and
word choice than web graphics); regular attendance and engaged class discussion
(online and off); oral presentations (analyzing style); and written stylistic
analyses of your own and other's prose. Computer-integrated. Texts:
Strunk & White, Elements of Style; G.& G. Hoffman, Adios
Strunk & White; Angell & Heslop, The Elements of E-Mail Style;
Williams, Style: Ten Lessons...; Lynch & Horton, Web Style
Guide.

485 U (Novel Writing)Tues 4:30-7:10 pmBosworth
This is not a course for beginning fiction writers. Just as one should never
attempt a marathon before training at shorter distances, it is not wise to
attempt a novella or novel without some experience in short fiction. It is
presumed, then, that you are familiar with the fundamentals of fiction writing,
of dramatizing experience, and creating a "fictional moment." For although
we will pay attention to all dimensions of fiction, emphasis will be placed
on those problems which arise from length--how one orders a longer sequence
of events, how one manipulates a large cast of characters, how one retains
a sense of unity and identity within the diversity which characterizes most
novels. (Note: it is acceptable for this course, and in many cases advisable,
to undertake a long story or novella before attempting a full-length novel.)
Fiction writing is a serious way of knowing the world, and no time will be
squandered on analyzing the purely commercial marketplace, or on how one
might reduplicate fiction whose only function is the passing of time or the
making of money. Prerequisite: ENGL 384 or 484 or equivalent, and
writing sample Prerequisite: ENGL 384 or 484, writing sample.
Add codes available in Creative Writing office, B-25 PDL. Text:
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories.

491 A (Internship)*arrange*
Supervised experience in local businesses and other agencies. Open only to
upper-division English majors. Credit/no credit only. Prerequisite: 25 credits
in English. Add codes, further information in Undergraduate Advising office,
A-2-B Padelford (206-543-2634).

492 A (Advanced Expository Writing Conference)*arrange*
Tutorial arranged by prior mutual agreement between individual student and
instructor. Revision of manuscripts is emphasized, but new work may also
be undertaken. Instructor codes, further information available in Undergraduate
Advising Office, A-2-B Padelford (206-543-2634).

493 A (Advanced Creative Writing Conference)*arrange*
Tutorial arranged by prior mutual agreement between individual student and
instructor. Revision of manuscripts is emphasized, but new work may
also be undertaken. Instructor codes, further information available in Creative
Writing office, B-25 Padelford (206-543-9865; open 1-5 daily).

494 A (Honors Seminar)MW 1:30-3:20Dunn.Whose Novel Is This: The Case of Wuthering Heights. Study
of the novel’s genesis, reception in its own time and since involves a variety
of scholarly, interpretative, and theoretical issues. A number of short
papers and a term-long project will be required. English Departmental
Honors students only; add codes in English Advising Office, A-2-B PDL.
Text: Brontë, Wuthering Heights (ed. Dunn &
Sale).

497/8 A (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)MW 9:30-11:20Solberg(W)Race and America. Here we explore race as a central fact of
American life and its literary expression. Readings range from the
19th-century Huckleberry Finn to the contemporary Meena Alexander. We
will look at the controversies surrounding Twain’s classic, race and the
color line as seen by DuBois at the beginning of the last century, and briefly
how those problems have played out down to the present. You will be
encouraged to bring your own experience of life to bear on the topic as we
trace the often tenuous-seeming links between “literature” and “life.”
Two papers and one class presentation. 497: Senior English honors students
only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL; 498: Senior majors
only (open to non-majors Registration Period 2).Texts: Mark Twain,
Huckleberry Finn; W.E.B. DuBois, Writings: The Suppression of the
African Slave-Trade, The Souls of Black Folk, Dusk of Dawn, Essays, Articles
from the Crisis; Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing; Carlos Bulosan,
America is in the Heart; Meena Alexander, The Shock of Arrival:
Reflections on Postcolonial Experience; Manhattan Music.

497/8 B (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)MW 10:30-12:20Kuske(W)The White Captive and the Literature of the Early Nation. One
of the first distinct, new literary genres to emerge out of colonial America
was the Indian captivity narrative. First popularized in the seventeenth
century by Puritan propaganda campaigns after King Philip’s War, captivity
narratives were best-sellers throughout the eighteenth century, and provided
the raw material for a first generation of post-Revolutionary poets, novelists
and dramatists who were self-consciously attempting to define and create
a “unique” American literature. We will begin with a brief sampling
of colonial accounts of captivity, and discuss the particular functions
captivity performed within colonial American culture. Then we will examine
how the figure of the white captive is appropriated and used by a range of
early national writers, and deployed in a range of different genres and literary
forms, especially in sentimental, gothic and historical novels, but also
in tales, poetry and plays. Finally, we will compare these "domestic"
incidents of captivity to popular nineteenth-century narratives of white
Americans taken captive by Barbary pirates off the coast of Africa. Course
requirements will include extensive reading, independent historical research,
a short (5-6 page) paper, and a seminar (12-15 page) paper. 497: Senior
English honors students only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B
PDL; 498: Senior majors only (open to non-majors Registration Period 2).Texts: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly; Catherine Maria
Sedgwick, Hope Leslie; Lydia Maria Childs, Hobomok; Richard
Vanderbeets, Held Captive by Indians: Selected Narratives, 1642-1836;
Paul Baepler, White Slaves African Masters; photocopied course packet.

497/8 C (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)MW 12:30-2:20Reed(W)The Constructive Imagination. Through a careful reading of the
twentieth-century American poets Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and John Ashbery,
this course will grapple with such vexed questions as the ethical value of
beauty, the utility of pleasure, and the reality of virtual worlds.
It will also address collateral issues such as the place of poetry in wartime,
the relation between authorship and sexual identity, and the dangers of utopian
dreaming. The course will conclude by survey ing a few contemporary
writers, most likely Susan Howe, Ann Lauterbach, and John Yau, who are actively
revisiting and revising the earlier poets’ ideas in the light of a changed
and changing America. 497: Senior English honors students only; add codes
in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL; 498: Senior majors only (open to non-majors
Registration Period 2).Texts: John Ashbery, Selected Poems;
Hart Crane, The Complete Poems; Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the
End of the Mind.

497/8 D (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)MW 2:30-4:20Kaup(W)Literature of the Americas: Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? Using
strategies from comparative literature, this course brings together major
writers and texts from U.S. and Latin American literature. Intended
to break down barriers between American and Latin American literary and cultural
studies, this course is organized around the question, Do the Americas have
a common literature? In our cheek-by-cheek readings of literature from the
Southern and Northern parts of the hemisphere, we will look at five major
themes or categories which constitute possible sites of common ground in
the literature and culture of the Americas: (1) Formative Definitions
of American Identities: "Our (Mestizo) America" vs. the U.S. (Emerson, Jose
Marti, Roberto Fernandez Retamar); (2) Representations of "the Indian"
from the 19th century to the present in the U.S. and Peru (myths of the frontier
and the "Vanishing American"; Reformism, Women Writers and the Sentimental
Novel; indigenismo (Pero); contemporary Native American literature) (Fenimore
Cooper, Dancing with Wolves, Helen Hunt Jackson, Clorinda Matto de
Turner, Jose Maria Arguedas, N. Scott Momaday) (3) Harlem and Havana:
the Black Atlantic, modernism and African-American/Afro-Cuban connections
(blues poetry [Langston Hughes] and poesia negra [Nicolas Guillen]); (4)
Modernism in the Americas: Modernity and the Search for a Usable Past/the
Quest for Origins: hybrid genealogies, transculturation, hemispheric multiculturalism
(Octavio Paz, Richard Rodriguez, Carmen Tafolla, William Carlos Williams,
Alejo Carpentier) (5) Postmodern Connections and American Labyrinths
of Fiction (Jorge Luis Borges and Thomas Pynchon). Part of the fun of this
class is to "test-drive" a "discipline-in-progress": Comparative Hemispheric
American Literary and Cultural Studies is just in its infancy as a discipline,
and we can all pasrticipate in its creation and development. Assignments:
2 short papers and 1 research paper. Required texts: Alejo Carpentier,
The Lost Steps; Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Helen
Hunt Jackson, Ramona; William Carlos Williams, In the American
Grain; Clorinda Matto de Turner, Torn from the Nest; N. Scott
Momaday, House of Dawn; photocopied course packet. 497: Senior
English honors students only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B
PDL; 498: Senior majors only (open to non-majors Registration Period 2).

497/8 E (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)TTh 9:30-11:20Butwin(W)Tales of Two Cities: Paris and London in the 19th Century. Two
European cities earned the term “metropolis” in the 19th century: Paris and
London. The population of each grew enormously in that period and each
saw vast reconstruction of streets, parks and architecture. It may
be that Louis Napoleon who used his dictatorial powers to redesign Paris
between 1850 and 1870 was inspired by a previous period of exile in London.
In any case, the two cities spoke to each other, and we will respond to both
by studying several novels along with paintings, architecture, and street
plans. In addition to novels by Charles Dickens and Emile Zola, there
will be a packet of readings from writers adept in both cities along with
material from contemporary newspapers and journals. Seminar discussion,
short essays and a research project. 497: Senior English honors students
only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL; 498: Senior majors
only. Texts: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; A Tale of
Two Cities; Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris; The Masterpiece.

497/8 F (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)MW 1:30-3:20(W)PrebelNineteenth-Century Domestic Ideology. In this class we will
consider the literal and metaphorical representations of the domestic and
“home” through readings of 19th-century literature and culture. There
will be weekly journal-style response papers, an oral presentation, and one
long term paper. This is a small seminar, and students are expected
to actively participate in each class session. 497: Senior English honors
students only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL; 498: Senior
majors only.Texts: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin; Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; Elizabeth Keckley, Behind
the Scenes; Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of Seven Gables; Jane Addams,
Twenty Years at Hull House.

497/8 G (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)TTh 1:30-3:20Allen(W)Jeanette Winterson: The Writer as Bad Girl. Contemporary fiction
writer Jeanette Winterson is both beloved by her fnas, and notorious for
her outrageous comments about herself and the recent writing scene.
What do we make of someone who calls herself “the greatest living prose
stylist in English,” or who is convinced “there is no such thing as autobiography,
only Art and Lies”? Some of her fictions play with gender, others with
fantasy and sexuality. As she writes, gives interviews, and responds to critics,
she makes herself a fiction, even as she takes so much pleasure in making
imaginary worlds. We’ll read a number of her books, including Oranges
Aren’t the Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, and Written
on the Body, along with interviews, and critical commentaries about her.
The seminar will be of particular interest to students interested in gender,
queer studies, risky writing, and the fine art of making yourself a myth
while you’re young. 497: Senior English honors students only; add codes
in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL; 498: Senior majors only (open to non-majors
Registration Period 2).

497/8 YA (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)TTh 7-8:50 pmKeeling(W)Passing. Judith Butler, describing a scene in Nella Larsen’s
Passing, says that “queering is what upsets and exposes passing; it
is the act by which the racially and sexually repressive surface of conversation
is exploded by rage, by sexuality, by insistence on color.” Many scholars,
such as Juda C. Bennett, suggest that the passing figure is distinctly American
and is crucial to our understandings of race. In this course, though,
we will seek ways to extend the concept of “passing” in order to explore the
motivation behind a person’s decision, either to adopt a specific racial/gendered/ethnic
guise or to conceal one. In addition to Passing and a photocopied
course packet, texts for the course MAY include Jeanette Winterson’s
Written on the Body, D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, Philip
Roth’s The Human Stain, Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House Behind
the Cedars, Gad Beck’s An Underground Life, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s
Room, Natalie Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre, Janet Lewis’s
The Wife of Martin Guerre, Aphrodite Jones’s All She Wants,
and Elaine K. Ginsberg’s Passing and the Fictions of Idenity.
Please check the syllabus for this course (found at http://students washington.edu/bkeeling/)
prior to purchasing texts for the course. Evening Degree students
only, Registration Period 1. 497: Senior English honors students only; add
codes in English Advising office, A-2-B PDL; 498: Senior majors only.